Opinion: Rep. Chuck Edwards' self-reported progress reports mislead the public

Chuck Edwards recently sent a newsletter touting his congressional accomplishments last year.

“I’ve had the distinct privilege of introducing 16 bills and cosponsoring more than 160 pieces of legislation,“ the newsletter starts.

Upon a cursory glance, 16 bills and 160 pieces of legislation seem impressive. However, Edwards is doing what many American workers do (always keep in mind that congresspeople should not be viewed as vaulted political deities, but as what they are: public servants who work for us, the people): measuring and reporting his KPIs by output rather than value.

For those of you blessed enough not to be beholden to corporate America, KPIs stand for key performance indicators, a quantifiable measure of performance over a specific period to showcase progress and effectiveness. For my day job, I’m a content marketer for an HR software company. An example of one of my KPIs is how many leads my content (blogs, webinars, social posts) helps deliver to the sales team.

Many workers use what we call vanity metrics to impress … and mislead. Vanity metrics look good on paper but don’t measure progress or tell a complete story when you dig beneath the surface. Take, for example, a hypothetical sales team who decides that one of their main KPIs will be the number of deals closed.

In said hypothetical scenario, Salesperson A made 100 sales in a month, and Salesperson B only made 20. On the surface, it might appear that Salesperson A has won, and he certainly brags about being the biggest closer at the office, but the reality is that he often promises what the company can’t deliver, misleads what the product does, and most of the subscriptions he sells either cancel soon after the deal closes or don’t renew at the end of the term. On the other hand, Salesperson B has 20 happy customers who all renew and become long-term clients, generating recurring revenue for his employer.

Salesperson B is the better, more valuable salesperson. Still, if the head of sales sent out a monthly report to the entire company based on the KPI of sales closed, most people would understandably think Salesperson A is the superstar. It’s a classic case of quantity vs. quality. Unfortunately, the American ethos is all about more, more, more — big numbers, hustling 24/7, rising and grinding, etc. — all look great but don’t account for value.

When I started my position, one of my KPIs was the number of articles I wrote monthly. However, about a year into my employment, my manager and I reevaluated that and decided to monitor the effectiveness of the articles, not the number. Writing two well-written articles each month that get visitors to the company website and convert to sales leads is much more valuable than writing 20 articles a month that make me look like a writing machine but don’t prove progress.

Case in point: Edwards introduced 16 bills. That’s like hypothetical Salesperson A closing 34 sales. Neither KPI provides a follow-up. None of Edwards’s 16 bills passed, just as most of Salesperson A’s sales didn’t stick around.

Edwards focuses on quantity vs. quality further down in the newsletter when he says that his team closed more than 1,700 constituent cases successfully and responded to more than 64,000 calls, emails and letters since last January. I emailed Chuck Edwards three times in 2023. The first one, about his lack of urgency in terms of gun violence, was answered thoroughly to his team’s credit. The second email was responded to with a copy of the first email, even though that one was asking him to define woke and say what was so bad about it (since he uses it pejoratively constantly). The third email was just a form, “Thank you for reaching out, I value your input … blah, blah, blah.”

Answering 64,000 emails is impressive if you legitimately answer each of them. But if you’re sending form emails to the majority and not addressing the subject at hand, it’s just a vanity metric designed to make you look productive. It makes me wonder how he defines “successfully” regarding those 1,700 constituent cases.

While I think Edwards certainly deserves my ire, his misleading KPIs are emblematic of the larger quantity vs. quality issue that plagues Congress. According to govtrack.us, the 118th Congress introduced over 11,603 bills last year, which I’m sure many congressional representatives are touting to constituents as examples of their effectiveness. However, only 122 of those bills — a mere 1% — became actual laws.

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Pat Brothwell is a former high school teacher and Pennsylvania expat and current writer and marketer living and working in Asheville. His writing has also been featured in the Charlotte Observer, Fast Company and GQ. 

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: NC Rep. Chuck Edwards self-reported progress metrics mislead public